


break the frozen heart

by orphan_account



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/F, Femslash, crackship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-07
Updated: 2014-09-07
Packaged: 2018-02-16 13:24:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,413
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2271333
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The village girl stands in her way, a bow and quiver on her back and two tomahawks at her side. Elsa starts and holds her hands up, an automatic gesture of warning. “Don’t—please, don’t come any closer.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	break the frozen heart

**Author's Note:**

  * For [naessas](https://archiveofourown.org/users/naessas/gifts), [birdsandmirrors](https://archiveofourown.org/users/birdsandmirrors/gifts).



> blame audrey, who blurted out the thought of tiger lily and elsa and then MY RAFT WAS CREATED. bb yazzy edited. have fun, darlings. (ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*:･ﾟ✧

* * *

Anna’s cries are what jolts Elsa out of her thoughts. She looks away from the swirling portal, ready to fight for her sister—but again, that was how she’d gotten here, wasn’t it?

Anna is crying, held back only by the grim Kristoff, who is guarded by Charming and Hook. Elsa nods to him, then looks at her sister. “It won’t be so bad,” she promises. She tries to smile, but her expression crumbles instead and she finds herself fighting off tears. “You’ll be happy in Storybrooke. You’ll see.”

“Go,” Robin says, voice quiet and still thick with grief. Elsa tries to freeze her chains, just once, but Rumple’s charms are too strong for her. The Dark One smiles grimly, as if he can sense her pathetic attempt.

Elsa looks away from Anna, her own vision blurred by hot tears. _I deserve this,_ she tells herself, and jumps in before she can doubt her words.

* * *

The land they’ve banished her to is green and humid and… deserted. Elsa staggers onto the beach and collapses, shoulders shaking with the effort to suppress her sobs. Marian’s frozen face is still in the forefront of her mind, as is the image of thick sheets of ice that had once encased Storybrooke and the shattered clock tower. But Anna’s tears are the memory that hollows out her heart, turns her grief silent and brooding.

And once her grief is almost spent, once her eyes burn and itch and the cold howls like a beast inside her heart… she has nothing to hold her back.

Elsa lifts her head to the sky and screams—screams for the niece she will never see, for Marian ( _it was an accident I didn’t mean to why couldn’t they see_ ), for being banished to such a hell.

She screams, and the ice bursts out of her fingertips and hands and feet to encase the entire beach. Elsa covers her face and gives in to one last sob, not noticing—not _caring_ —when the ice that surrounds her begins to creep out further and further.

The winter storm begins as a low whine. Elsa hears it and stills, then clenches her jaw and thinks _let it rage_.

* * *

She doesn’t remember falling asleep, but when she opens her eyes, the sky is full of billowing gray clouds and the ground is blanketed in thick, powdery snow. For a moment, she thinks she’s back in Arendelle, back with Anna and her _home_. But as she sits up, her dress drags against the snow, and she realizes what she’s done.

Her heart nearly stops at the thought, but she reassures herself: _it’s an empty world. They told me so. They wouldn’t exile me where I could be a danger to someone else._

Comforted, Elsa begins to walk through the trees, shivering at the utter emptiness of the place—and she finds herself curious about it. Was it a city, a kingdom, an island, a _world_? What had happened to it that had made it so… _abandoned_?

She wanders over the entire land, comforted by the snow falling in thick swirls rather than perturbed. She’d tried _so_ hard to get better at controlling her powers… but who did she have to control them for in a forgotten world, where the weather only affected her?

The snow’s up to her knees by the time she realizes it’s an island, and a rather small one at that. Once she has the outskirts, she moves through the trees like a ghost, learning the ins and outs of her new home. Every once and a while, she can swear she hears a boy’s faint snarls of _stop it, you’re ruining everything_ against the shell of her ear, but when she turns there’s no one hidden among the trees.

It’s late at night before she finally smells smoke. It’s faint, fleeting, but it still sends a shiver of fear through her heart. Elsa turns, clearing the snow in front of her for a path, and starts running toward… wherever the smoke had come from.

The trees rise up like black hulking towers, staring down at her. Elsa deeply inhales the air again, but all she can smell is the crisp, biting cold of winter. No smoke.

She keeps going, even though she tells herself she’s imagining the whole thing. _It’s abandoned_ , she reassures herself. _They would never exile me to a world that still had people in it._

Every step she takes, the hollowness widens, turning into a yawning chasm inside her chest. If she’s responsible for another death… Elsa shakes her head and keeps searching.

The clouds have dispersed by the time dawn comes, leaving a glitteringwhite blanket over everything—and Elsa still hasn’t found the source of the smoke. The person who’d lit it could very well be dead already. The thought brings back memories of Marian and Elsa shuts her eyes.

The sun is just peeking over the horizon when she finally breaks through the endless jungle and stops. “No,” she whispers, voice hushed. A ring of longhouses sit on a hill above her. Elsa’s legs move on their own accord. The snow melts to give her easier access. As she runs up the hill, she whispers, “No, please, _please_ , this can’t be happening again.”

At the top of the hill, she stifles her gasp with her hands, breathing out a misty fog that dissipates in the air. Bodies, none of them dressed for such weather, are strewn about with a fine layer of snow covering most of them.

Elsa picks her way through the village, fighting down the storm that swells inside her. Her grief had already been the cause of—of this _slaughter_. She sees a baby boy huddled in the arms of his frozen mother and bites her lip so hard that the warmth of her blood in her mouth stuns her.

She goes inside a longhouse and starts when she sees a girl, huddled in furs and sitting on a bare, bed-like structure. Her shoulders and stomach are barely covered with the furs she has, and her bare legs are fully exposed to the winter air. She’s shivering, eyes closed and lips pale—and she’s the only moving person that Elsa’s seen since she got here.

Elsa looks around, but there are no more furs in the longhouse. She swallows hard and looks back at the girl—no, young woman, really—again. _I won’t let her die._

She doesn’t dare move closer, in case her very presence makes the stranger colder, but she focuses her eyes on the young woman’s face and wills her to live. “Can you hear me?” she asks.

The young woman’s eyelids flutter, but her eyes don’t open. Elsa gnaws on her nail and darts back outside, sitting in the snow and shutting her eyes. _I’ve done it once, I can do it again._

But no matter how hard she tries, that… _spark_ that had allowed her to vanquish Arendelle’s curse is missing.

She goes to every longhouse and pries frozen furs from dead bodies, biting her lip and whispering apologies to every face she sees. When her arms are full of furs, she returns to the longhouse and bundles the girl in them, carefully making sure that her fingertips never touch uncovered skin.

She’s binding a fully-covered foot with an icy string when the girl shifts. Elsa looks up, hoping against hope, and meets the tear-filled gaze of the girl she’s saving. “Make sure you burn us,” she says, shutting her eyes.

Elsa’s heart leaps in her throat and she stands up, hands shaking. Was she… dead? Just like that? But Elsa had tried so hard to _save_ her, to fix her mistake _somehow_ …

Heart racing, Elsa brushes aside a curtain of jet-black hair and touches the stranger’s neck. Her skin almost burns, but… but Elsa can feel a pulse. She’s alive, _thank God_.

Elsa rushes outside and concentrates; in a moment, ice and snow crack and a large, lumbering shape pulls itself out of the snow, its eyes glowing pale blue. “Help me,” Elsa begs. The snowman enters the longhouse and returns with the unconscious girl in its arms.

Elsa takes one last look at the ( _murdered_ , the boy’s voice from nowhere hisses in her ear) villagers and turns on her heel, fleeing into the jungle with the snowman right behind her. The ghost-boy laughs cruelly and says, _You’re always running, aren’t you, Elsa?_

* * *

She builds an ice palace along the mountainside, just like last time. A part of her hates herself for it, because the two situations are _completely_ different. She tries to imbue whatever warmth she can in a room for the stranger, but all she feels is cold. As the girl is lying in a room, Elsa is pacing on a balcony, doing her best to try and dispel the snow.

But in the end, she doesn’t have to do _anything_. Once the sun is out, she can feel the warmth creeping back into the sky. By afternoon, all the snow is gone and the oppressive heat is back in full force, as if it’s making up for its absence tenfold.

Elsa reenters her melting castle and brings the girl out into direct sunlight, slowly taking off the furs and exposing her to the warming air. She sits by the girl’s side, close enough to keep a watchful eye but far enough that she isn’t a danger to her.

The stranger opens her eyes and sits up, her dark eyes flickering around the jungle before settling on Elsa. Elsa doesn’t say anything, but the girl, somehow, seems to know anyway. Her gaze turns flat in less than a second and her jaw ticks once. “Did you burn them?” she asks, her bluntness stunning Elsa. ( _She… she doesn’t even look_ _sad_.)

Elsa can’t find her voice, so she clears her throat and shakes her head. The girl stares at her for a long while, eyes narrowed. “I _told_ you to burn them.”

“I…” Elsa looks down at her hands and presses them to her chest, farther away from the stranger. “I was too focused on saving _you_.” She looks back at the girl, who has the back of her palm pressed to her eye.

The girl lifts her head at that and bristles, showing her teeth in an animalistic snarl. “You should’ve done what I said! Now they’ll never rejoin—” she falters, breath hitching. “You’ve doomed them.”

 _Doomed them?_ Elsa tries to speak, but she can only watch as the girl storms away, melting into the trees like it’s a second skin. The jungle is quiet and deafening, all at once, and Elsa shuts her eyes to keep her calm.

When she opens her eyes, every tree around her is covered in half-melted ice. Elsa presses her hands to her chest and returns to her castle, trying to ignore the regret that fills her heart.

In the silence of the jungle, she hears a girl’s unrestrained wail late in the night and pretends not to notice the howl of a winter wind that accompanies her cries.

* * *

The jungle seems endless, and empty. Elsa distracts herself from the eerie silence by practicing her ice, focusing shapes in her mind and smiling slightly when she succeeds in creating them. She diverts herself from any thought of the girl’s pain by breathing evenly and ignoring the ice that trails after her footsteps.

She walks through the scorching jungle, relishing the feel of a new, perfectly cool dress, and shoots a swirl of snowflakes up into the air with a fingertip, turning her face up to the sky to catch them. They rain down on her and stick to her eyebrows and eyelashes before melting and running down her cheeks.

And then she reaches a clearing and stills. An abandoned campsite, looking eerily like the village, stands in front of her. She looks at thatched boxes hanging in the trees, inspects the dirty tents, and wonders if she’d killed the campsite’s residents as well.

The thought makes her chest tighten, and she turns to leave—but the village girl stands in her way, a bow and quiver on her back and two tomahawks at her side. Elsa starts and holds her hands up, an automatic gesture of warning. “Don’t—please, don’t come any closer.”

In a moment, the girl has her bow in her hands and an arrow notched and pointed straight at her. Elsa looks at her, and sees Hans’s guard with the crossbow instead. She fights down her growing panic. “Neverland swallowed my people,” the girl says, narrowing her eyes. “You denied them a chance at rejoining heaven. I’ll kill you for that, and give you the same fate.”

Elsa shakes her head. “I—I told you, I was trying to save you—”

The arrow flies. Elsa doesn’t shut her eyes this time; she grinds her heel into the ground and a slab of ice shoots up in front of her, catching the arrow just like last time. “I don’t want to fight you,” Elsa says, taking a step back. “I didn’t know that would happen to them, I swear—I was going to go back and burn them later—”

“ _Liar!_ ” The girl drops her bow and pulls out a tomahawk. Face twisted in fury, she snarls, “When you’re in hell and the spirits ask why you’ve come, you can tell them that Tiger Lily sent you there.”

Tiger Lily darts around the ice and throws the tomahawk, grabbing her bow again the moment it leaves her hand. Elsa stares at the tomahawk, frozen in place, and then she reacts on instinct. Another slab of ice appears and the tomahawk wedges inside that instead of her skull.

A low, distant whine echoes in Elsa’s ears, and Elsa narrows her eyes. _She wants a fight? I’ll give her a fight._

She gathers her hands together and holds them out to Tiger Lily—and a block of blue ice follows, forming a wall between them. The whine picks up into a howl, and a faint breeze bearing a familiar winter chill brushes against Elsa’s cheek. The frost under her feet spreads out, crawling up the trees to form an icy semicircle around them.

“You think you can scare me with ice?” Tiger Lily sneers. She grabs her second tomahawk and swings it, splitting the ice apart and lunging for her.

Elsa sidesteps her and lifts her wrist, and a tendril of ice shoots up to wrap around her ankle, sending her sprawling into the dirt. The wind picks up sharply and their little section of the jungle begins to snow. Tiger Lily turns onto her side and gives a vicious kick, breaking the ice and its hold on her.

She stands up, but Elsa doesn’t wait for her to charge again—a gust of icy wind pushes Tiger Lily against a tree, and when Elsa sweeps her hands up, icicles burst from the ground to form a cage around her.

Tiger Lily stands absolutely still as three icicles sharpen to knives and press against her neck. Snow dusts her eyelashes and hair, standing out against the color of the jungle. “Do it,” she spits. As her jaw moves, one of the icicles poke into her neck, and a drop of blood begins to trail down her neck.

Elsa sees the blood and presses her hands to her mouth. _Don’t be the monster they fear you are_ , Hans says in the back of her mind, and somewhere in the forest she can hear the ghost-boy laughing at her.

At a gesture, the icicles retract, leaving enough room for Tiger Lily to be safe but not enough to let her go free. “I won’t fight you,” Elsa says, her voice shaking. She cups her hands over her heart and backs away. The snow, stretching out in a thin blanket as far as she can see, reaches her ankles. Elsa looks at the snow-covered jungle and thinks, _God, I’m such a fool._

She looks back at Tiger Lily and fights to keep her expression neutral. “I won’t fight you,” she says again. Tiger Lily’s jaw ticks, but she says nothing. Elsa looks at the cage she’s created for her and turns away, picking up the skirts and running through the snow.

The boy laughs at her back, his voice carried on the wind. _You’re always running, aren’t you, Elsa?_

* * *

She finds the treehouse sometime in the middle of the third week of her exile. It’s a broken-down, desolate thing; patches of the wood have rotted through, revealing glimpses of dusty furniture inside.

A door, broken on the hinges, is carved into the tree trunk that holds the wooden house. It’s the perfect height for a child, and, once again, Elsa wonders what kind of past this little island had.

She ducks inside the hollowed-out tree trunk and climbs up the makeshift ladder, delighted and startled at the sight that awaits her. It can only be described as a beautiful bedroom, filled with trinkets dusty and dull from age. A torn sheer curtain hangs beside the rusting wrought-iron bedframe, the mattress and bedsheets themselves moth-eaten and musty.

Elsa picks up a small vial of white dust and turns it over in her hand, but nothing happens, and she puts it back. She picks up a small teacup and examines the delicate china patterns. Wesselton had had china like this, before… Elsa swallows the sour taste in her mouth.

“What are you doing?” The voice, colder than anywinter, comes from nowhere. A shard of frost travels up the china and it shatters in Elsa’s hands. She gasps and turns around, shards of the teacup still in her hand. Tiger Lily stands there, a tomahawk looped in her belt and her eyes brimming with… disgust? Hatred? Both?

Elsa can’t tell. That hurts more than knowing. “I’m—I’m sorry,” she says, looking helplessly at the ruined teacup in her hands. “You startled me.”

Tiger Lily steps forward, heat emanating from every part of her. “You shouldn’t be here,” she says, her voice just as cold. Elsa steps back, ready for another fight. A shot of ice travels down from her arm to skitter to the glass vial with the white dust, which cracks underneath the weight of the ice. Tiger Lily’s expression doesn’t change, but her eyes are dark and furious. “Get out. Get _out!_ ”

Elsa flees to her small castle and wonders why she didn’t fight back. But then, as her steps produce icicles that shoot away from her and curlup dead tree trunks, she thinks of the frozen faces and wonders how Tiger Lily kept herself from doing more.

* * *

Elsa hesitates by the treeline, staring at the vacant longhouses on the hill above her. She rubs her palm, takes a deep breath, and heads up the hill.

Tiger Lily narrows her eyes when Elsa appears in the village, her hands pressed tightly to her chest. “What do you want?” Tiger Lily asks, and Elsa looks at the bare ground. She can’t imagine the island just opening up a rift in the dirt and swallowing the villagers whole, but… while horrifying, it seems to fit.

“I never apologized to you,” she starts, breathing deeply. The frost creeping around her bare feet recedes again, and she continues, looking up at Tiger Lily. “I… I wanted to say I’m sorry. Truly sorry. If I had known there were people here…”

“I don’t want your excuses,” Tiger Lily says. She crosses her arms, looking at her with blank eyes, and Elsa can’t bring herself to return the gaze. After a long moment of silence, Tiger Lily turns around.

Elsa looks up, watching her walk away. “What were they like?” she asks. Tiger Lily stops her walk and slowly turns around. Elsa steps closer, then shakes her head slightly. “I mean…”

Tiger Lily is in front of her in a moment. For the first time in forever, her eyes hold something _other_ than anger. “You care?” she asks, brow furrowing.

Elsa nods, hope blossoming—then tightening—in her chest. “Of _course_ I care.”

Tiger Lily watches her for a long while. “Then we do this as nòkomis would have,” she says. “Around the fire.”

Elsa helps her gather the wood from nearby trees, but she starts when Tiger Lily offers her a hand. Elsa looks at it for a moment, then her cheeks flush at the thought of what she must look like to Tiger Lily. Elsa bites the inside of her cheek and hopes for the best as she takes her hand.

* * *

The fire is almost dead by the time Tiger Lily rests her hands on the ground and pushes herself to her feet. Elsa stands up too, brushing off the dirt and repairing her dress with a few flicks of her fingers. “Thank you, Tiger Lily,” she says, pouring all her desperation to be forgiven into her voice. Tiger Lily stares at her for a long moment, then turns her head to look at the jungle, frowning slightly.

Elsa looks down and swallows hard. One day, maybe, Tiger Lily will forgive her. It’s an awful thing to wish for, forgiveness. “I… goodbye,” she says. She can feel Tiger Lily’s eyes on her back as she walks toward the forest, and she cups her hands over her heart to keep the cold inside.

She tells herself that she remembers the way back to the mountain, but it seems that every turn she makes brings her back in a circle.

 _You dare linger here?_ A voice, which inexplicably sounds like an infuriated boy’s, suddenly roars in her head. Elsa winces at the noise, covering her ears, but the voice continues. _You, who destroyed what was left of my island?_

The wind picks up around her, lifting the hem of her new dress to flap around her legs. Elsa can’t hear anything over her pounding head and the rush of the wind in her ears, but she can see. She lifts her head in time to see a vine swing away from a tree and snap in half, falling limply to the ground. More vines and shrubbery join it, and the plants begin to knit themselves into… _something_.

A vine crawls along the ground, black thorns dripping from its stalk, and disappears into the writhing mass. Elsa stands rooted to the spot, eyes wide, as a possessed jungle cat made of plants lifts its head. Elsa takes one look at it and the frost around her feet spreads out into a small protective circle.

The panther rakes the soil with its thorny claws once. With a deep, guttural snarl it shouldn’t be able to make, the creature crouches down and lunges for her.

Someone—but how could she think _someone_ , really, when there’s only one person left on this island?—shoves her aside, and the snarling thing stops short at a familiar sight. Tiger Lily stands in front of the vine jungle cat, unarmed, defenseless—but uncompromising. The panther flattens its leaf-ears and turns toward Elsa, but Tiger Lily, again, steps in front of it. After a long moment of silence, the animal seems to deflate. It walks toward her with a low whine and looks up at her with desolate black eyes. Tiger Lily kneels, lays a hand on its head, and whispers, “Peter, be at peace.”

The name _Peter_ means nothing to Elsa, but it does to the monster in front of her. The same voice she’d heard before whimpers through the air, ringing around her, and it fades away as the vines untangle themselves and they swarm into the ground.

And then they are alone, and Elsa—as usual, she’s not quite sure what to say. At last, her eyes still fixed on the spot the vine-panther untangled itself under Tiger Lily’s touch, she manages to choke out, “Why… why did you do that?”

“You saved me,” Tiger Lily says, as if it’s the simplest thing in the world. Elsa watches her, already the hollow ache of guilt making its home inside her, but… Tiger Lily’s eyes are empty of the grief that used to plague her.

They are empty of… _anything_. Somehow, that makes the guilt worse.

Tiger Lily stands up and offers her a hand. Elsa watches it for a moment, then, still hesitating, she grabs it. Tiger Lily pulls her up and steps away the moment Elsa’s on her feet. “Now I have saved you.”

She turns and bounds away, and somehow the heat of her palm still burns through Elsa’s fingers.

Somehow, it feels as if Tiger Lily has forgiven her.

* * *

Elsa wakes up to something unusual: noise. And not the standard bugs or frogs—which she has yet to hear on the island—but… it almost sounds like the endless tinkering of little bells. She sits up, blinking at the pale sunlight straining through the clouds.

She changes into a new dress and walks onto the balcony, resting her hands on the railing and looking out over the jungle that stretches before her. The bells still ring, but she sees nothing that could cause it—and then, out of the corner of her eye, she sees a purple-silver glow.

Elsa turns around and blinks at the creature floating in the air in front of her. She’s heard of pixies, of course, but she’s never actually _seen_ one. She stares at it, transfixed, and the creature flies closer, its magnificent wings spread out on either side.

Like a hummingbird, the thing darts around Elsa’s head before coming to a floating stop in front of her face. Elsa’s close enough to see the plum-colored shades in the creature’s black hair, and the vibrant purple eyes in her sharp, angular face. The dress she wears floats around her knees, all varying shades of purple, and she crosses her arms as she looks at Elsa.

The pixie opens her mouth, and the stream of tiny bells comes out instead of words. Elsa blinks, confused, and the fairy darts inside the castle. “No—wait,” Elsa says, picking up her skirt and running after it. The fairy stops at the spiraling staircase, lets loose another stream of bells, and then flies to the door. Elsa doesn’t know why she chases after the thing—but it’s been weeks since Tiger Lily saved her from that… that thing, and she’s had no one to talk to since then. Her snowman was only capable of grunts, and she fears what memories it would bring back if she were to give him speech.

The fairy stops short at the doors, her wings fluttering, but then she moves her hands—and the doors begin to groan open. Elsa almost stops at the sight of such magic—she hasn’t seen anything like it since Storybrooke—but she’s sick of running away from people and them running from her.

The fairy turns around with a sharp, knife-like grin, and beckons with her hand. Elsa barely spares a moment to catch her breath before she’s running after the creature, following her into the woods.

The fairy chatters as she flies, and Elsa can _swear_ she hears the whisper of a word… but then it’s swept away by a warm breeze, and the fairy’s only speaking nonsense again.

The fairy finally stops at a gnarled oak tree that stretches up to the skies. Thousands of leaves litter the ground and its bark is scorched black, but… she can feel a sense of life underneath its dead surface.

Before she can dwell on it further, Tiger Lily emerges from the underbrush, her copper skin also flushed and her hair windswept. “Vidia?” she asks, eyes wide, and the fairy responds with a ringing laugh as it speeds toward her. Tiger Lily laughs slightly as Vidia spins around and shakes her head. “Vidia, how—how are you here?”

Elsa watches the fairy chatter and turns toward the ginormous oak Vidia led her to. She draws closer to the tree and blinks at the sight of tiny, almost invisible buds of furled yellow flowers attached to the branches.

Vidia notices and flies over to Elsa. Elsa looks away from the yellow flowers and glances up toward the fairy, who holds a single finger up. Elsa looks at her, then Tiger Lily, who’s watching her in silence. Gooseflesh prickles across her arms and she looks back at Vidia, who’s hovering over a flower bud.

Vidia makes a fist and concentrates—and when she opens her hand, she blows softly, and purple dust swirls out to envelop the blossom. In a moment, the flower unfurls and releases a burst of sparkling yellow dust. “Beautiful,” Elsa breathes out, transfixed by the show.

Self-satisfaction brims in the fairy’s eyes, and Vidia gives her another sly, sharp-toothed smile. Tiger Lily steps closer, looking at the floating dust with something like awe on her face.

“What does it mean?” Elsa asks, amazed at the sight of the glowing, grinning creature. Vidia laughs and speeds away, the sound of ringing bells fading after her.

Tiger Lily looks after the fairy and says, very softly, “It means that magic is returning to Neverland.”

* * *

Elsa doesn’t know what brings her to the treehouse again. When she climbs up its ladder, she can hear the island muttering its disapproval against her ear, but she ignores it.

She picks up the shards of china carefully, resting the broken pieces on the bed and kneeling for the proper view. One by one, she puts the shards together and carefully seals them with her ice, just like she’d practiced on the teacups she’d made just for this purpose. Soon, the entire teacup is reassembled, with only the finest cracks to show that it had ever been broken.

Elsa stands, turns around and almost drops the teacup again when she sees Tiger Lily there. A blue frost begins to creep up the teacup, so Elsa sets it down on the musty, moth-eaten bed and smoothes her hands over her dress. “Why can’t I ever hear you?” she asks.

Tiger Lily tilts her head, something unfathomable in her dark eyes. “The island tells you, but you don’t listen.”

Don’t listen? But Elsa’s always listening; it’s not as if she spends her days _talking_ to someone. She almost asks Tiger Lily what she means, but then the young woman steps forward and her thoughts stutter to a halt.

Elsa automatically responds with a step back, putting distance between Tiger Lily and the danger hidden underneath her skin. Tiger Lily’s lips tug into a small frown, and she turns her attention to the teacup instead. She picks it up and handles it with strange, unfamiliar delicacy as she puts it back in its place. “Thank you for fixing it,” she says at last.

Elsa rubs a knuckle, unsure of how to respond to that. “Tiger Lily,” she says, hesitating, and Tiger Lily turns. “Who…” Elsa looks around and gestures with a swallow. “Who lived here?”

She takes even longer to respond this time, so long that Elsa thinks Tiger Lily won’t answer her question. But then Tiger Lily’s gaze sweeps over the entirety of the bedroom, something like a ghost lingering inside of her eyes. Her gaze finally settles on Elsa and the ghost clears away. “Her name was Wendy.”

“Wendy?”

Tiger Lily nods, clenches her jaw once before she relaxes again. “She was… a friend of mine. I think I was the only friend she had. And then she left.”

“What happened?”

Tiger Lily’s jaw muscle ticks again. “People from Storybrooke came. She told me and the tribe to stay out of it, because she and Pan and Felix could handle them. And then the ones from Storybrooke killed Pan and left with Wendy and the Boys. But they didn’t come for us. They left us behind, all alone.” A nostalgic, caustic smile graces her face and she touches the china again. “And then you came.”

Elsa looks down at her hands and curls them into fists. She takes a deep breath and looks up, desperate to get out her story—her _whole_ story—before Tiger Lily leaves her alone again. “Storybrooke’s the reason I’m here, too. They… they banished me here, they told me this world was empty. They sent me here because I wouldn’t be able to hurt anyone. If I’d known that you and your tribe still lived here…”

Tiger Lily looks at her and Elsa falls silent, looking down at her hands. “I know you didn’t want my excuses,” she says, her voice soft, “but I thought you might want my story.”

“What’s your name?”

Elsa looks up again, confused. “I—what?”

“What’s your name?” Tiger Lily repeats, fingers brushing over the china set.

“Elsa.” She resists the urge to add _of Arendelle_ to her words, because Tiger Lily wouldn’t know, or care.

Tiger Lily nods to herself, and they lapse into silence once more. Elsa rubs a knuckle and licks her lip. “Do you think Wendy might come back?” she asks. “I mean, you were her friend, weren’t you?”

She thinks of Anna while she asks about Wendy. Perhaps, if Wendy was as good a friend as Tiger Lily claimed, she would come back for her—and then what would stop Anna, her sister, the one person she loved most, from coming to Neverland and bringing her back to Arendelle?

Tiger Lily’s smile turns bitter. “Why would she? She hated Neverland, and everyone in it.”

With that, she turns and disappears down the exit, leaving Elsa alone. Elsa takes another look at Wendy Darling’s bedroom and follows her to the clearing in front of the treehouse.

“Not everyone,” she says. Tiger Lily stops and turns around. Elsa flushes but keeps talking. “I mean, you just said she was your friend, didn’t you?”

Tiger Lily stares at her, something unreadable in her eyes, and turns to leave without answering. Elsa holds out a hand before realizing what she’s doing; embarrassed, she clasps her hands together instead. Tiger Lily notices the movement, though, and turns around. For a long moment, Elsa doesn’t say anything, and Tiger Lily steps closer. Too close. Elsa could feel her heat, even from here, but she doesn’t further the distance between them.

“What is it, Elsa?” Tiger Lily asks. Her voice is not soft, but it’s not rough or impatient, either. Mild. It’s an improvement from three months ago.

“It’s just… earlier, you said I didn’t listen to the island.” Elsa falters, looks down at her hands, and Tiger Lily closes the distance between them more. “I don’t… I don’t understand. I do nothing but listen to the island—”

“You don’t,” Tiger Lily interrupts. “Not really.”

“Then how do I listen to it?” Elsa asks. “I… I’m going to be stuck here, forever. I want to at least learn to be friends with it.”

Tiger Lily stands there for a long time, staring at her. Elsa holds her hands closer, uncertain under Tiger Lily’s perpetual scrutiny. The silence stretches on and Elsa shake her head. “Never mind. It wasn’t a good idea anyway. I’ll just—”

“Elsa.” Tiger Lily grabs her hand and sits down, bringing Elsa down with her. She stares at their entwined hands and sighs. “Shut your eyes.”

She obeys, trying not to focus on how hot Tiger Lily’s hands are. One of Tiger Lily’s hands draws away, leaving one hand wrapped tightly around hers. “The island is always speaking, but we are not always listening. To truly hear Neverland, you must release everything—all your thoughts, your fears, your worries. Let them go. Give them to Neverland, and listen to what’s outside, not inside.”

Elsa almost opens her eyes at Tiger Lily’s words, but she takes a deep breath and keeps them shut. She imagines each frozen face and shuts them out, pushes them from her mind and tells herself that she is _forgiven_. She sees Marian’s frozen face and Robin’s grief and Regina’s cold fury—and she shuts those memories out, letting them go with every steady breath. She can feel a low, warning whine deep in her heart, but Tiger Lily’s hand is warm enough to keep it at bay.

She drowns out the storm inside and tries to listen to Neverland, instead. At first, all she hears is her own steady breathing—but then she hears the steady rhythm of fingers tapping against grass. Tiger Lily’s other hand. A faint melody of some bird drifts in, and when the wind, warmer now, brushes against her she can hear the ghost-boy’s annoyed huffs carried within the breeze.

Elsa takes another breath, concentrates more—and then Neverland is _alive_ with sound and laughter and life. She hears a tinkling bell, then the word _sweetie_ , and an image of Vidia inexplicably enters her mind. The wind carries the sound of crickets on its back, and she hears a set of wind chimes ring softly above her—and somehow, she knows that it comes from Wendy’s treehouse.

Elsa squeezes Tiger Lily’s hand and can’t stop her smile. “Do you hear it?” Tiger Lily asks.

Elsa’s response is barely more than a breath. “Yes.”

She opens her eyes to see Tiger Lily’s face only a few inches from hers. She began to realize how pretty Tiger Lily was several weeks ago, but just—never _how_ pretty. From far away, Tiger Lily is stunning; up close, she’s… breath-taking. Elsa stifles her startled gasp (because that’s how it is with them, isn’t it, Tiger Lily always startling her) and would have pulled away… if it weren’t for Tiger Lily’s hands hovering in front of her face.

Tiger Lily doesn’t look at what she’s doing. She only keeps her eyes on Elsa, but Elsa can’t return that favor. “What are you—” she begins, but then the back of Tiger Lily’s knuckles brush across her skin, sending warm tingles down her spine and raising pebbled gooseflesh.

Tiger Lily blinks and her hand stills. “Do you not like it?” she asks.

Elsa stares at her, unsure of how to respond. For a moment, she doesn’t hear the silence that has seemed to encompass Neverland since her arrival. She hears the small signs of the island coming back to life: the distant ringing of bells; splashes from the lakes and faint, feminine laughter; the drones of crickets and frogs. Elsa takes a deep breath and nods. “I do,” she says.

Tiger Lily’s lips curve up, just slightly, and her other hand comes up to cup Elsa’s face. Elsa wills herself to stay still, shutting her eyes and trying to ignore how… unfamiliar, intimate, _tender_ it feels.

When was the last time someone had touched her face? Her mother? A memory of her parents trying to comfort her and the words _I’m dangerous_ hanging in the air between them flits behind her eyelids, and Elsa opens her eyes to bring herself back to the present.

Tiger Lily’s hands are so warm Elsa thinks they’ll leave scorch marks on her skin, but of course they don’t. Tiger Lily shifts, scooting so she kneels next to Elsa. Elsa tilts her head back in response, fighting the urge to pull away and warn Tiger Lily of what dangers she’s facing right now, just by _being_ with her.

Tiger Lily leans forward farther, but stops just short of kissing Elsa. Her hands cradle Elsa’s face, strange and foreign and _welcome_ , and there’s a certain softness in her eyes that Elsa’s never seen. “May I?” she asks, her voice barely above a whisper.

Elsa swallows hard. _I’m dangerous_ , she wants to cry, but all she does is nod. Tiger Lily sweeps back some of her hair and presses her lips to Elsa’s. Elsa stiffens, hands moving to Tiger Lily’s shoulders to push her back, but she surprises herself when one hand cups the back of Tiger Lily’s head, fingers entwining with her hair, and the other clings to Tiger Lily’s shoulder.

Tiger Lily kisses like she’s a wildfire in human flesh, consuming everything in her path. The hands cradling Elsa’s jaws tighten as Tiger Lily kisses her lips open, her tongue skimming Elsa’s upper lip.

It’s too much, too soon. Elsa squeezes her eyes shut, the kiss awakening a deep ache that curls through her lower belly. Tiger Lily’s kiss is slow and sure, but Elsa still feels as though she has to sprint to keep up with her. She tells herself that it’s a shallow kiss, that it doesn’t mean anything, that once it’s over Tiger Lily will go back to not caring about her. But no matter how many times she reminds herself of the truth, she can’t silence the voice that cries out for Tiger Lily’s touch, for acceptance, for _warmth_.

And then one of Tiger Lily’s hands skims her breast as it travels down to her stomach. A jolt of pure, electric _heat_ shoots through Elsa at her touch, and the strength of it stuns her. She pulls away, but Tiger Lily makes a needy noise and follows her, her wet mouth biting at her neck and kissing along her jaw. Elsa tries to catch her breath, but all she can focus on is Tiger Lily beside her, Tiger Lily’s hands, Tiger Lily’s lips— _a wildfire_ , she thinks wildly. _A wildfire swallows everything it touches whole._

She pulls away before Tiger Lily can consume her, right there in the middle of the jungle. Tiger Lily is left behind, staring at her blankly. She blinks, and her characteristic calmness returns.

Elsa scoots away, her heart still pounding and her body still overheated. Tiger Lily sits, her lips slightly parted and swollen, and Elsa looks away as the ache inside deepens. The few inches of grass between them feels like a sea.

“Don’t run,” Tiger Lily says. There is no sense of urgency in her tone. Her eyes—black now, darker than they’d been before the kiss—are fixed on her; steady, but not pleading.

Elsa stands, trying not to notice how she can still feel the ghost of Tiger Lily’s kiss on her lips. She’s never cared about the cold—not before—but the absence of Tiger Lily’s warmth makes her wonder if this was what _cold_ truly was. “Don’t pretend like you care whether I stay or go.”

Tiger Lily says nothing, so Elsa swallows her disappointment and turns away. She pretends not to notice the thick layer of ice growing underneath her feet as she runs. _You’re always running, aren’t you, Elsa?_

* * *

Tiger Lily isn’t at the camp the next afternoon, and the island only sneers at her when she asks it where she is. After several hours, she finds her—her back pressed against a tree and her head tilted toward the sky, her eyes wide and looking for all the world like she’s just seen a ghost.

The sound of waves should be a calming influence on Elsa, but the sight of Tiger Lily unsettled spooks her. She draws closer to the unmoving woman—but, after all this time, after yesterday, still too afraid to get too close.

“What is it?” she whispers. Tiger Lily’s gaze lifts up slowly, settling on her face, and when she exhales her whole body trembles. She doesn’t answer, which unsettles Elsa more. A frost begins to creep out from underneath her feet and she fights to keep it bottled up inside. Tiger Lily’s eyes flicker to the white ground below, but she says nothing.

Elsa swallows hard as Tiger Lily pushes off the tree and turns around, leaving the jungle line and treading onto the beach. Elsa follows her, several feet behind, and starts at the unfamiliar sight she sees.

A young girl about Tiger Lily’s age, perfectly dry and wearing strange Storybrooke clothes, stands on the beach, staring at the setting sun. Tiger Lily stops halfway to her, and the voice she uses when she calls out to the girl is unfamiliar to Elsa—soft, gentle… _caring_.

As if she’s known this newcomer all her life.

“Little bird, you flew back,” Tiger Lily says, an aching familiarity in her tone. The girl turns around. Without knowing her, without knowing her story—Elsa _knows_. A small part of her breaks inside, but she can’t look away.

“Oh, _Lily_ ,” Wendy Darling says. She sweeps up the beach to Tiger Lily, hands reaching up and brushing her cheeks with her thumbs with a gentleness Elsa recognizes. “Lily, why are you crying?”


End file.
